Lebanon Daily News | Robert Sweigart, a volunteer firefighter with Myerstown's Goodwill Fire Company, is taken to his grandparents' home in Hinkletown from the Hershey Medical Center.

Fireman gets escort from hospital to home

Friday May 16, 2014 12:01 AM

Lebanon Daily News
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HERSHEY - Firefighters from more than a dozen fire departments escorted a gravely ill brother fireman home from the hospital Wednesday afternoon.

When Robert Sweigart was released from the Hershey Medical Center, he was greeted by his fellow Myerstown firefighters.

But they weren't the only ones waiting for him.

A short distance away, more than 20 pieces of apparatus from fire companies from Lebanon County, plus the Frystown Fire Company and a suburban Harrisburg station, along with the Lebanon County HazMat team were waiting for him.

He was carried home by the Myerstown ambulance.

Sweigart, a firefighter with Myerstown's Goodwill Fire Co., was being treated at the medical center for his second bout of leukemia and was going home because his treatments weren't stemming the disease.

"He said he didn't want to die in the hospital," said his mother, Karen Sweigart of Manheim. Sweigart decided he wanted to go home, she said.

Goodwill Fire Co. Deputy Chief Briceon Kale said Sweigart started out as a junior firefighter at the age of 14.

He also served as a firefighter for Kutztown, Frystown and Schaefferstown fire companies, Kale said.

Members of the convoy made their way along Route 322 to Sweigart's boyhood home in Hinkletown just outside of Ephrata, where he lives with his father, Reese Sweigart, and his grandparents, Warren and Linda Sweigart.

It's an emotional day for the Lebanon County firefighting community.

Nick Serikstad of Lebanon's Chemical Fire Co. came up with the idea of the escort Tuesday afternoon. Serikstad posted a message on the Lebanon County Fire Wire and the Lebanon County Weather Facebook pages, and word of the convoy quickly spread.

He said he was on the phone until midnight making arrangements for the escort.